A Very 多読 Manual

I realized that tadoku may have been a little confusing earlier since all the information was spread around a bunch of old post so I am going to pool all that information into this post. This contest runs on twitter.

1. Contest Months

The ReadMOD Tadoku contests runs during the months of Updated schedule in the top right of the blog This means that the contest starts the second that the timezone you inhabit hits a contest month. example  January 1, 2012 00:00:00.  Contest rounds end on the last second of the month. Example January 31, 2012 23:59:59.

1. Mediums and Values

You can read various types of media for the Tadoku contest. Each medium has a different points (points = Tadoku pages) per page value associated with it.  The following list will show you the viable mediums and points per page (ppp) values.

• #book  : 1 ppp
  • #dr ^[6] – (double rowed) Japanese Only : 1.48 ppp
• #manga : 0.2 ppp
• #net : 1 ppp
• #fullgame ^[1] : 0.1667 pps (points per screen) ^[2]
• #game^[3] :  0.05 pps ^[4]
•  #lyric: 1 ppl (point per lyrics for whole song)
• #subs : 0.2 ppm (points per minute)
• #news : 1 ppp
• #nico : 0.1 ppm
• #sentences : Language dependent

1. How to Register

If you are using the application, registering to take part in the contest is as easy as hitting the “sign in with twitter” button on the site, pressing the register button, and then selecting which languages you want to read and optionally your goal for the month. Very straight forward! If you want to register via the bot, please follow the instructions below.

Registering for Tadoku contests usually starts 15 days before the start of the round and closes midway into the contest. Participants are restricted to 3 reading languages in order to ensure that they get to read extensively in each language.  When you sign up you will let the bot know you are registering by using the #reg tag followed by what languages^[5] (separated with a semicolon) you plan on reading in. Example:

“@TadokuBot #reg #lang1; #lang2; #lang3”

If you only intend on reading  Japanese you simply submit “@TadokuBot #reg”. This will set your language to JP automatically.

If you only plan on reading 2 languages simply remove “; #lang3” from the first example : “@TadokuBot #reg #lang1; #lang2”.  Participants that only plan on reading one language (that isn’t Japanese) simply remove everything behind #lang1.  If your attempt to register is successful the bot should send you back a message confirming that you have registered.

• Setting a goal

  You may set a goal as long as the register is open.  Simply tweet “@TadokuBot #target {number}“(minus the {}) to set your goal for this round. This may also be attached to your initial register tweet.

• Submitting your read pages

Reading submissions, like registering, are handled by the TadokuBot. In order to submit your update to the bot you simply tell the bot how much(page, screens, minutes) you read and what medium it was. You are not required to do any page conversion, the bot will handle all that for you. Example:

“@TadokuBot 51 #manga”

Be very careful to section off other non-update related numbers with a semicolon.If you forget this the bot will include that number in your update. Example:

“@TadokuBot 94 #book; Man Harry Potter book 6 is awesome!”

The example above is a shows the correct way to section off other numbers from an update. If the semicolon had not been placed the bot would read the update as 946 #book. Please don’t forget your semicolons.

You can submit however many updates you like at once provided that you separate each medium’s update with a semicolon. Example:

“@TadokuBot 51 #manga; 12 #book; 982 #sentences”

a. Submitting minutes

The #subs and #nico mediums require you submit the time watched. The syntax for that is HH:MM, H being hour and M being minutes. Example:

“@TadokuBot 01:50 #subs” 

The colon must be present or the bot will ignore the update.

The bot will now take subs submitted just like the other format. ex.

“@TadokuBot 170 #subs”

b. Submitting pages you re-read (repeats)

If you have previously something before but would still like to read it for the contest you must tell the bot how many times you have read the text. You receive half as many points for each read. So if this is your second time reading a book you would use the #second tag. Third time? #third etc (note: the repeats only go to #fifth) Example:

“@TadokuBot 80 #book #third”

c. Undoing a mistake

If you incorrectly submit an update you can undo it by using the #undo tag. The #undo tag deletes your last update and recalculates your score.  If you previously submitted a tweet with 10 updates and made a mistake in the 5th update you have to undo all the updates that followed that tweet AND that update (thats 6 undos). Example (for 3 undos) :

“@TadokuBot #undo; #undo; #undo”

d. Submitting for languages other than Japanese

Previous examples have shown the way to submit pages for Japanese language reading. If you want to submit pages for another language all you have to so is specify which languages the submission is for. To do this all you have to do is add the language tag to the end of that particular update. Example showing multiple language submission:

“@TadokuBot 15 #book #pt; 86 #net #ko”

1. Checking your score/rank

You may view your current page count and rank at any time by viewing the ranking page.

1. List of all the tags

• #book
• #dr ( for Japanese use only)
• #manga
• #net
• #fullgame
• #game
• #lyric
• #subs
• #news
• #nico
• #sentences
• #undo
• Lang tags
• #fr – French
• #de – German
• #es – Spanish
• #en – English
• #ko – Korean
• #th – Thai
• #zh – Chinese
• #it – Italian
• #nl – Dutch
• #pl – Polish
• #el – Greek
• #ru – Russian
• #eo – Esperanto
• #he – Hebrew
• #sv – Swedish
• #pt  – Portuguese
• #af – Afrikaans
• #ar – Arabic
• repeat tags
  • #second
  • #third
  • #fourth
  • #fifth

• Additional Information

  • What counts as a net page?

For those of us reading Japanese finding out our page count from text is as easy as copying the text into word and dividing the word/character count by 400. The rest of you however will have to estimate based on the length of the passage. If its short its best to just count the sentences.

• Do SRSed sentences count?

Text that has be entered into a Spaced Repetition System is not allowed to be counted for the contest due to the high repetition.

If you have any questions you can comment here or contact me on twitter @LordSilent.

[1] : “Fullgames” are visual novels where text covers the whole screen.  Example

[2] : That’s (1/6)th a page

[3] :”Games” tag is for visual novels that display text inside a text box. Example (If you are playing a game that isn’t as text heavy please count the sentences and adjust them to games for submission.)

[4] : That’s (1/20)th a page

[5] : See the language tags above

[6] : The #dr tag is only to be used with the Japanese language and must be accompanied by the #book tag. Example